Customer Service for Small to Midsize Organizations

Desk.com is Salesforce.com's cloud-based customer service offering for very small to medium-sized businesses. Its strengths include case management and reporting capabilities, as well as channel and mobile device support. Desk.com’s knowledge model and knowledge management services support multiple languages very well.

Case Management, Knowledge Management, and Social Customer Service for SMBs

Freshdesk packages attractive and high value cross-channel case management, knowledge management, social customer service, and chat capabilities suitable for small, mid-sized, and large organizations. It competes with Zendesk and with Salesforce.com's Desk.com.

Virtual Assistants that Deliver Answers and Perform Actions

Nina Mobile and Nina Web, the virtual assistant offerings from Nuance, can deliver personalized answers to customers’ questions and perform actions for individual customers in speech or text in 43 languages on desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. This 46-page report evaluates Nina against our Evaluation Framework for Customer Service Software,

Capabilities for Self-Service, Assisted-Service, and Social Customer Service

Salesforce Service Cloud provides a broad and deep collection of customer service capabilities across self-service, assisted-service, and social customer service channels, earning an excellent evaluation. Read the specifics in our 50-page evaluation.

Delivering Answers and Solutions; Creating and Resolving Cases

Use this new version of our Framework for Evaluating Customer Service Software Products to produce actionable evaluations, comparisons, and selection. It’s adaptable to every type of customer service application.

Customer Service for Small and Growing Businesses

Desk.com, from Salesforce.com, provides case, account, and knowledge management capabilities across assisted-service, self-service, and social customer service channels for very-small, small, and mid-sized businesses. Read our evaluation in this report.

Social Customer Service with Powerful Monitoring and Filtering, Deep Analysis, and Alert-Driven Customer Interaction

Clarabridge Analyze and Clarabridge Act monitor and analyze customer conversations on internal and social channels and provide mechanisms to interact with customers. Filtering, analysis, and classification are the strengths. Read our in-depth evaluation.

3Q2013 was a good quarter for customer service. Customer growth and financial performance were up. Product activity was light. Four companies expanded into new markets. Moxie and Salesforce.com earned Customer Service Stars for 3Q2013.

Use Dialogue Mapping to Build a Shared Understanding and Evolve a Group’s Thinking

Jeff Conklin’s book, Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems, is a “must read” for people in groups grappling with intractable issues and/or for people who are designing products or solutions. Here’s why.